Milan

19 July 2005

Milan

Managed to get out for an hour this morning to have a prod round the neighbourhood of the Duomo, La Scala et al. Its an absolutely scorching day, not a cloud in the sky after last nights downpour. Down at the stadium the tour production was in full set up mode. The storm apparently visited Zurich last night too and gave the touring production a good dousing during load out.

I spent a while building a new video sequence for Miracle Drug which I was very happy with. I felt like that song was (visually) never quite finished in the outdoor show, until now.

The light this evening was entirely different to last night. Yesterdays clouds were gone so we found that the light stayed 20 minutes or more longer than it had previously. Consequently weve pushed onstage time back to 9.10pm, as tomorrows weather forecast is about the same as today.

We got cameras up and running and as evening came we began to see how the camera pictures were looking. It was very promising indeed. The roof of the building is a massive steel construction that looks like an extension of our steel back wall video screen. When the big lights came on it looked like the missing scene from Alien Resurrection. One small element in particular is going to give the video pictures a really special feel. We have ringed the stadium with small red bulkhead lights - just regular 100w lightbulbs - and also edged the b-stage ramps with them. En masse on camera they make up a whole universe of red dots which will be in the background pretty much the whole time, helping to define the space. Its such a tiny thing, but will make a huge difference. We stayed late programming, 3am, 4am rolled by and it was still 29 degrees. Well be tired tomorrow, but this is going to look really good.